Indigenous Peoples
Tetra Tech is committed to working with indigenous peoples as clients, business partners, and strategic interest groups affected by development projects.
Tetra Tech places a high value on indigenous peoples’ inclusion in its projects, including the incorporation of traditional knowledge and expertise. We seek to deliver meaningful cultural recognition, employment, education, and training opportunities for indigenous peoples. Our scientists, engineers, and technical specialists work with indigenous peoples in all our business sectors, including environment and natural resources, cultural heritage resources, water and wastewater, solid waste management, infrastructure and transportation, remediation, arctic engineering, conventional and renewable energy, oil and gas, and mining. Through our projects, we respect indigenous peoples’ land tenure and property rights, engagement with government institutions and receipt of services, and capacity building for indigenous groups.
Tetra Tech works to maximize indigenous peoples’ meaningful employment and business opportunities on our projects as subcontractors and in field, professional, and management positions. We aim to provide opportunities for community youth and elders, wherever possible, and incorporate their concerns into our project solutions. We inform indigenous communities as early as possible in the execution of our contracts for subcontractor and employee recruitment. Tetra Tech provides training opportunities for community members with a focus on developing transferrable skills. We also use indigenous suppliers and services in the execution of our contracts and use community facilities whenever possible (e.g., laboratory space).
Transparency, honesty, trust, and respect are core values for Tetra Tech. Our teams acknowledge community concerns throughout all phases of our projects. We train our employees and work with our contractors to ensure they are sensitive to cultural protocols and respect cultural and spiritual values and practices.
As we work on projects involving indigenous peoples, our teams establish communication protocols that incorporate and reflect community values. We provide information on our projects in formats that are appropriate and in a language that is easily understood. Tetra Tech teams work with indigenous communities to establish protocols for the recording and sharing of information, particularly matters of a sensitive cultural nature. We invite feedback from the community on each project. We also celebrate successes by publically recognizing indigenous peoples’ accomplishments and contributions to our projects.
